State Department Will Use AI to Search for 'Pro-Hamas' Students to Deport
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Is this administration really going back to fucking McCarthyism?
I think a better argument here is to observe that the use of “AI” here is entirely pretextual, as is the connection to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is purely an action within the existing xenophobic policies of the administration, dressed up against current topics to make that less obvious. The goal is to deport people full stop; these are just “easy” cases to make, and they’re hoping that the next round of people to be deported keep cheering until it’s their turn.
Your statement about special rights for Visa holders is a nonsequitur
I don't think this is relevant (or even correct, but that doesn't matter). 1A is simply not a right (or "control on the behavior of the government") that applies here: visas are issued at the discretion of the State Department.
Or more simply: I don't think a visa holder could successfully argue that the State Department is obligated to renew their visa solely on 1A grounds. If this isn't the case, then an argument against revoking would fail similarly.
> Trump himself hinted at as much during his speech. “The Senate just passed the Take It Down Act,” he said. “Once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.”
As best I can tell, the State Department exercises the same of rules (enshrined in law) during both renewal and revocation.
The adjacent thread points out that visa eligibility already contains explicit proscriptions around expression: advocating for a designated terrorist group makes one ineligible for a visa, per federal law. I'm not aware of any challenge to that rule that's been mounted on 1A grounds.
(I don't think anything Trump says about the Take It Down Act is relevant here. That's an entirely separate miscarriage of justice that does have 1A relevance.)
1A would obviously be material.
But again, I cannot emphasize enough how much all of this is pretextual: the people doing this don’t give a damn about Hamas, or anti-Semitism, or anything else. It’s about deporting people, full stop.
[1]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
Sure, there's a law. Try and enforce it.
Unless I'm mistaken, all the agencies with the power to arrest a member of the Executive branch, lie within the Executive branch itself and they are all controlled, or soon will be controlled, by persons appointed by the President. All of these persons are expected to be more faithful to the current President than to the Constitution.
Which means: even if Congress wanted to stop him, there's nothing that it can do to enforce that.
I wonder what is the process for that finding. Is a court involved?
It should not be unilateral decision by state department.
My understanding is that the State Department can revoke a visa without any court involvement. There's a waiver process, but that process also entirely sidesteps the courts.
> It should not be unilateral decision by state department.
I agree completely.
I mean, it’s what their voters want. Burn the constitution if there’s a chance you can singe a “liberal” in the process.
The only thing any of them fear is being primaried by someone even more strident.
[1]: https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-am...
Short answer, yes [1]. The First Amendment prohibits the Congress from passing a law that abridges the freedom of speech. There is no visa exception. That would make such visa terminations unlawful. (If a student on a visa got themselves arrested, that’s a separate matter.)
On a strategic level, this should give us hope. Trump is back to his first term arrogance and chaos. If State had moved quietly and decisively, damage could have been done before it was too late. The Palestinian cause is only a little bit more popular than USAID; in the end, there wouldn’t have been a broad fight. Instead, they got caught by Axios [2]. So we can get injunctions ex ante.
[1] https://oiss.yale.edu/campus-community-life/for-students/leg...
[2] https://www.axios.com/2025/03/06/state-department-ai-revoke-...
In reality even permanent residents could be deported for what would be 1st Amendment protected activity for citizens.
In Harisiades v. Shaughnessy the deportation of legal residents for membership in the Communist party was upheld as Constitutional. This hasn't been overturned or narrowed and remains good law today.
Whether current immigration law allows for this I don't know, but this isn't a 1st Amendment issue based on current precedent.
> In the Court’s opinion, they noted Section 1155 as an absolute confirmation of discretion. USCIS may choose to revoke previously approved visa petitions at any time, for any reason the Secretary and USCIS determine is a “good and sufficient cause.”
https://bizlegalservices.com/2024/12/12/supreme-court-confir...
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/24
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/604us1r03_3f14.p...
Disclaimer: My understanding, IINAL, etc. etc.
Discretion by the Congress on the President. Congress is still bound by the Constitution.
If they’d cancelled the visas and left the reason blank, that would have probably been legal. By explicitly tying the reason to speech, however, I believe it crosses the line.
I think most people don't know HSI is practically as big(ger?) as the FBI, they and CBP goons served as a sort of presidential army rolling into places like Portland taking people in unmarked vans [0].
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...
I think international airports can also be considered borders, but maybe the range around them is less?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
[1] Mentioning it because I'm still pissed about it.
I should just give up and end it all, instead of contributing to the world.
The machine is so bone headed they usually don't even know what the thing they're flagging for actually is. AI will be that on steroids.
“Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.”
It also just lines up with what I observed in HN users before that - the average user seems to be far more likely to be a richer, older, American conservative than any random user on the English internet or even other tech spaces.
The goal is to silence any criticism of Israel within the United States.
Let's not talk about genocide m'kay?